Jekyll2017-12-06T07:07:39-08:00http://www.effectiveengineer.com/The Effective EngineerTime is your most limited and critical resource. Learn powerful mindsets, strategies, and tools on how to spend it on what matters most.Edmond LauShare Powerful Stories to Shift the Culture Around You2017-11-08T00:00:00-08:002017-11-08T00:00:00-08:00http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/share-powerful-stories-to-shift-the-culture<a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/share-powerful-stories-to-shift-the-culture"><img src="https://d3oj8nq9p0q26f.cloudfront.net/blog/assets/images/posts/edmond-3-year-81f5614846709421938989301ed22e4a38137f163a7941fcfba51cc4faac5ac1.jpg" /></a><p>A few months ago, I passed my three-year anniversary of working at <a href="http://quip.com">Quip</a>. It’s the longest I’ve worked at any company, and my experience here has also differed significantly from other startups I’ve worked at.</p>
<p>Many of us are either already in leadership roles, or we’re starting to wonder what our personal path toward leadership might look like. And part of leadership – whether you’re a senior engineer, tech lead, a manager, a director, or someone else – is <a href="/blog/shape-culture-with-stories">shaping the culture around you through the stories you choose to tell</a>. The stories you emphasize and pass along become the lore that form core values.</p>
<p>And so, I’m sharing a montage of my favorite stories from working at Quip because my experience here has dramatically shifted my own perspective of what’s possible in Silicon Valley startup culture. I originally posted these stories in response to a Quora question on <a href="https://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-work-at-Quip/answer/Edmond-Lau">“What is it like to work at Quip?”</a> My hope is that you can find inspiration from these stories when it comes time to share your own.</p>
<p>Grab a snack and settle in for story time.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/share-powerful-stories-to-shift-the-culture">Continue reading "Share Powerful Stories to Shift the Culture Around You &raquo;"</a></p>Edmond Lau<a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/share-powerful-stories-to-shift-the-culture"><img src="https://d3oj8nq9p0q26f.cloudfront.net/blog/assets/images/posts/edmond-3-year-81f5614846709421938989301ed22e4a38137f163a7941fcfba51cc4faac5ac1.jpg" /></a><p>A few months ago, I passed my three-year anniversary of working at <a href="http://quip.com">Quip</a>. It’s the longest I’ve worked at any company, and my experience here has also differed significantly from other startups I’ve worked at.</p>
<p>Many of us are either already in leadership roles, or we’re starting to wonder what our personal path toward leadership might look like. And part of leadership – whether you’re a senior engineer, tech lead, a manager, a director, or someone else – is <a href="/blog/shape-culture-with-stories">shaping the culture around you through the stories you choose to tell</a>. The stories you emphasize and pass along become the lore that form core values.</p>
<p>And so, I’m sharing a montage of my favorite stories from working at Quip because my experience here has dramatically shifted my own perspective of what’s possible in Silicon Valley startup culture. I originally posted these stories in response to a Quora question on <a href="https://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-work-at-Quip/answer/Edmond-Lau">“What is it like to work at Quip?”</a> My hope is that you can find inspiration from these stories when it comes time to share your own.</p>
<p>Grab a snack and settle in for story time.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/share-powerful-stories-to-shift-the-culture">Continue reading "Share Powerful Stories to Shift the Culture Around You &raquo;"</a></p>Breaking Out of the Stories We Make Up About Ourselves2017-10-24T00:00:00-07:002017-10-24T00:00:00-07:00http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/the-stories-we-make-up<a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/the-stories-we-make-up"><img src="https://d3oj8nq9p0q26f.cloudfront.net/blog/assets/images/posts/universe-76ee7c6e4b13e76dad90f2f1e8024e73f95da362280099ccf595d5276fb5e9a8.jpg" /></a><p>This is a story about a box that I’ve been hiding in and how I’ve been fighting to break free.</p>
<p>“What’s one thing you learned about yourself in the past year?,” a close friend asked during my birthday dinner.</p>
<p>It was a well-timed question. The past year has been one of intense personal growth. I’ve become more aware of my impact on people, my limiting beliefs, and my dreams, and I also feel more agency than ever to shape my own story. My journey has felt as disorienting as I imagine it must’ve been for Neo to learn about the Matrix, take the red pill, and discover the truths hidden in plain sight.</p>
<p>I’ve learned that I hate the feeling of being boxed in. And some of the most restrictive boxes we find ourselves in are actually ones we’ve created for ourselves. We feel safer in these boxes, but these boxes — these limiting beliefs — also hold us back from playing bigger and living fully.</p>
<p>Here’s one of the boxes I’ve been hiding in, where the light is finally starting to shine through.</p>
<p>For the past year, I’ve been struggling with the limiting belief that “success creates distance” — that if people close to me know that I am successful, I will isolate myself from them. And because what I really want is to connect with people, I have to limit how successful people perceive me to be. I have to be smaller than I really am.</p>
<p>And so I dodge the spotlight. I hide in my safe, little box.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/the-stories-we-make-up">Continue reading "Breaking Out of the Stories We Make Up About Ourselves &raquo;"</a></p>Edmond Lau<a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/the-stories-we-make-up"><img src="https://d3oj8nq9p0q26f.cloudfront.net/blog/assets/images/posts/universe-76ee7c6e4b13e76dad90f2f1e8024e73f95da362280099ccf595d5276fb5e9a8.jpg" /></a><p>This is a story about a box that I’ve been hiding in and how I’ve been fighting to break free.</p>
<p>“What’s one thing you learned about yourself in the past year?,” a close friend asked during my birthday dinner.</p>
<p>It was a well-timed question. The past year has been one of intense personal growth. I’ve become more aware of my impact on people, my limiting beliefs, and my dreams, and I also feel more agency than ever to shape my own story. My journey has felt as disorienting as I imagine it must’ve been for Neo to learn about the Matrix, take the red pill, and discover the truths hidden in plain sight.</p>
<p>I’ve learned that I hate the feeling of being boxed in. And some of the most restrictive boxes we find ourselves in are actually ones we’ve created for ourselves. We feel safer in these boxes, but these boxes — these limiting beliefs — also hold us back from playing bigger and living fully.</p>
<p>Here’s one of the boxes I’ve been hiding in, where the light is finally starting to shine through.</p>
<p>For the past year, I’ve been struggling with the limiting belief that “success creates distance” — that if people close to me know that I am successful, I will isolate myself from them. And because what I really want is to connect with people, I have to limit how successful people perceive me to be. I have to be smaller than I really am.</p>
<p>And so I dodge the spotlight. I hide in my safe, little box.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/the-stories-we-make-up">Continue reading "Breaking Out of the Stories We Make Up About Ourselves &raquo;"</a></p>The Simple Secret to Effective One-on-Ones2017-09-27T00:00:00-07:002017-09-27T00:00:00-07:00http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/secret-to-effective-one-on-ones<a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/secret-to-effective-one-on-ones"><img src="https://d3oj8nq9p0q26f.cloudfront.net/blog/assets/images/posts/one-way-965b054c4729ae65b95eae0d93a7fe82c03e6d74938e6fba5a4035049d69d0d7.jpg" /></a><p>“What do you want to get out of our time working together?”</p>
<p>Whenever I start a new one-on-one work relationship — whether it’s with a new person on my team, a new mentee, a new manager, a new project partner, or a new coaching client — I’ll inevitably begin the conversation with some version of that question.</p>
<p>Something new always surfaces. I might have intuitions and assumptions about what’s important to the other person, but they’re never completely accurate.</p>
<p>Sometimes they’re even way off. I remember once being assigned to a new manager very early in my career and suddenly having someone else start to lead the meetings and drive the projects that I had previously been doing. At the time, I felt boxed in, a little resentful, and also resigned to this new way of the world.</p>
<p>It took me months to finally bring up what I wanted — more space to lead — in a one-on-one conversation. To my surprise, there was no resistance at all. He had stepped in because he had assumed that he needed to fill a void. And I had assumed incorrectly that he wanted to exert more control.</p>
<p>Our implicit assumptions led to missed opportunities.</p>
<p>That’s why the most important thing to do in any collaborative relationship is to <strong>explicitly design the relationship</strong>. At work, this is particularly important when it comes to your relationships with your manager and with anyone who reports to you — those relationships tend to be some of the longest-running ones you’ll have.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/secret-to-effective-one-on-ones">Continue reading "The Simple Secret to Effective One-on-Ones &raquo;"</a></p>Edmond Lau<a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/secret-to-effective-one-on-ones"><img src="https://d3oj8nq9p0q26f.cloudfront.net/blog/assets/images/posts/one-way-965b054c4729ae65b95eae0d93a7fe82c03e6d74938e6fba5a4035049d69d0d7.jpg" /></a><p>“What do you want to get out of our time working together?”</p>
<p>Whenever I start a new one-on-one work relationship — whether it’s with a new person on my team, a new mentee, a new manager, a new project partner, or a new coaching client — I’ll inevitably begin the conversation with some version of that question.</p>
<p>Something new always surfaces. I might have intuitions and assumptions about what’s important to the other person, but they’re never completely accurate.</p>
<p>Sometimes they’re even way off. I remember once being assigned to a new manager very early in my career and suddenly having someone else start to lead the meetings and drive the projects that I had previously been doing. At the time, I felt boxed in, a little resentful, and also resigned to this new way of the world.</p>
<p>It took me months to finally bring up what I wanted — more space to lead — in a one-on-one conversation. To my surprise, there was no resistance at all. He had stepped in because he had assumed that he needed to fill a void. And I had assumed incorrectly that he wanted to exert more control.</p>
<p>Our implicit assumptions led to missed opportunities.</p>
<p>That’s why the most important thing to do in any collaborative relationship is to <strong>explicitly design the relationship</strong>. At work, this is particularly important when it comes to your relationships with your manager and with anyone who reports to you — those relationships tend to be some of the longest-running ones you’ll have.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/secret-to-effective-one-on-ones">Continue reading "The Simple Secret to Effective One-on-Ones &raquo;"</a></p>How to Create Time and Space for What You Want to Do2017-09-12T00:00:00-07:002017-09-12T00:00:00-07:00http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/give-yourself-permission<a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/give-yourself-permission"><img src="https://d3oj8nq9p0q26f.cloudfront.net/blog/assets/images/posts/romania-peak-3554214e19aa53b209801904378bde63ad299863d7fbda0dd957b703e108696e.jpg" /></a><p>I laid on the couch. My body alternated uncomfortably through waves of heat and sweat. My lower back ached constantly. I swallowed my sixth Advil for the day, hoping that my pounding headache would stop.</p>
<p>I had caught some bug that was going around. With little energy to do anything, I ended up watching the entire season of Westworld — all 10 hours of it — in a single day. By the way, I loved the show — it felt like a role-playing game that mixed Jurassic Park and humanoid robots, all infused with an awesome storyline, great character development, and unpredictable plot twists.</p>
<p>Binge-watching a TV show isn’t something I usually do. Afterwards, I felt a little guilty.</p>
<p>Growing up in an immigrant family, with parents who have always worked six-day weeks, a hard work ethic has always been part of my identity. I often feel guilty whenever I’m wasting time or not being productive. I’ll ask myself, “Is this really the best use of the opportunity I have?”</p>
<p>It takes moments like me getting sick — and realizing that I was in no shape to do much else — to give myself permission to do activities that <em>feel</em> irresponsible. And that made me wonder: how often do we find ourselves so focused on doing the things we feel responsible for, that we have no time for the things that we actually want to do?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/give-yourself-permission">Continue reading "How to Create Time and Space for What You Want to Do &raquo;"</a></p>Edmond Lau<a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/give-yourself-permission"><img src="https://d3oj8nq9p0q26f.cloudfront.net/blog/assets/images/posts/romania-peak-3554214e19aa53b209801904378bde63ad299863d7fbda0dd957b703e108696e.jpg" /></a><p>I laid on the couch. My body alternated uncomfortably through waves of heat and sweat. My lower back ached constantly. I swallowed my sixth Advil for the day, hoping that my pounding headache would stop.</p>
<p>I had caught some bug that was going around. With little energy to do anything, I ended up watching the entire season of Westworld — all 10 hours of it — in a single day. By the way, I loved the show — it felt like a role-playing game that mixed Jurassic Park and humanoid robots, all infused with an awesome storyline, great character development, and unpredictable plot twists.</p>
<p>Binge-watching a TV show isn’t something I usually do. Afterwards, I felt a little guilty.</p>
<p>Growing up in an immigrant family, with parents who have always worked six-day weeks, a hard work ethic has always been part of my identity. I often feel guilty whenever I’m wasting time or not being productive. I’ll ask myself, “Is this really the best use of the opportunity I have?”</p>
<p>It takes moments like me getting sick — and realizing that I was in no shape to do much else — to give myself permission to do activities that <em>feel</em> irresponsible. And that made me wonder: how often do we find ourselves so focused on doing the things we feel responsible for, that we have no time for the things that we actually want to do?</p>
<p><a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/give-yourself-permission">Continue reading "How to Create Time and Space for What You Want to Do &raquo;"</a></p>The Myth that Technical Skills Alone Will Make You Great2017-08-21T00:00:00-07:002017-08-21T00:00:00-07:00http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/interpersonal-soft-skills-in-engineering<a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/interpersonal-soft-skills-in-engineering"><img src="https://d3oj8nq9p0q26f.cloudfront.net/blog/assets/images/posts/paints-fed0bf8364dba874eb0a661bdb007b861d45880c3c3d26cb6d9e10c21ae21b32.jpg" /></a><p>Recently, The New York Times featured <em>The Effective Engineer</em> in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/12/upshot/techs-damaging-myth-of-the-loner-genius-nerd.html">a piece about how skills like empathy, collaboration, and communication play critical roles in software engineering</a>. These interpersonal skills often get overlooked — in favor of technical skills — and it’s not difficult to see why.</p>
<p>The emphasis on the “hard” technical skills over the “soft” interpersonal skills in engineering starts as early as in school.</p>
<p>Nearly all of my computer science classes at MIT focused on the technical skills — ones like algorithms, systems, abstractions, design patterns. Very little instruction was provided on how to work effectively in teams, despite there being many opportunities for group projects.</p>
<p>I remember in one group project, a friend and project member consistently wasn’t pulling his own weight. Rather than confronting him on the issue, the rest of us just worked longer hours to cover for him. We lacked the maturity to approach the difficult issue, the tools for having uncomfortable conversations, and the context for how dialogue might have offered an important learning experience</p>
<p>And we all still ended up getting an A in the project and in the class. That only served to reinforce the wrong lesson, that perhaps interpersonal skills weren’t that necessary after all.</p>
<p>Our choice to overlook the situation was not healthy — how long can we sustain relationships where we always have to put in 120%? — nor was it the type of behavior we’d want to instill in new engineers entering the industry. It was a missed opportunity to learn more about what effective teamwork looked like and the conversations necessary to bring it about.</p>
<p>And here’s the thing.</p>
<p>The more time I’ve spent in engineering and in coaching conversations, the more it’s become painfully apparent that strong technical skills will only get you so far. You might even get an “A” like I did, for some definition of success. But you’ll plateau. Because ultimately, it’s the strength in the interpersonal skills that distinguishes the most effective teams and leaders.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/interpersonal-soft-skills-in-engineering">Continue reading "The Myth that Technical Skills Alone Will Make You Great &raquo;"</a></p>Edmond Lau<a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/interpersonal-soft-skills-in-engineering"><img src="https://d3oj8nq9p0q26f.cloudfront.net/blog/assets/images/posts/paints-fed0bf8364dba874eb0a661bdb007b861d45880c3c3d26cb6d9e10c21ae21b32.jpg" /></a><p>Recently, The New York Times featured <em>The Effective Engineer</em> in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/12/upshot/techs-damaging-myth-of-the-loner-genius-nerd.html">a piece about how skills like empathy, collaboration, and communication play critical roles in software engineering</a>. These interpersonal skills often get overlooked — in favor of technical skills — and it’s not difficult to see why.</p>
<p>The emphasis on the “hard” technical skills over the “soft” interpersonal skills in engineering starts as early as in school.</p>
<p>Nearly all of my computer science classes at MIT focused on the technical skills — ones like algorithms, systems, abstractions, design patterns. Very little instruction was provided on how to work effectively in teams, despite there being many opportunities for group projects.</p>
<p>I remember in one group project, a friend and project member consistently wasn’t pulling his own weight. Rather than confronting him on the issue, the rest of us just worked longer hours to cover for him. We lacked the maturity to approach the difficult issue, the tools for having uncomfortable conversations, and the context for how dialogue might have offered an important learning experience</p>
<p>And we all still ended up getting an A in the project and in the class. That only served to reinforce the wrong lesson, that perhaps interpersonal skills weren’t that necessary after all.</p>
<p>Our choice to overlook the situation was not healthy — how long can we sustain relationships where we always have to put in 120%? — nor was it the type of behavior we’d want to instill in new engineers entering the industry. It was a missed opportunity to learn more about what effective teamwork looked like and the conversations necessary to bring it about.</p>
<p>And here’s the thing.</p>
<p>The more time I’ve spent in engineering and in coaching conversations, the more it’s become painfully apparent that strong technical skills will only get you so far. You might even get an “A” like I did, for some definition of success. But you’ll plateau. Because ultimately, it’s the strength in the interpersonal skills that distinguishes the most effective teams and leaders.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/interpersonal-soft-skills-in-engineering">Continue reading "The Myth that Technical Skills Alone Will Make You Great &raquo;"</a></p>How to Make Your Engineering Team More Effective2017-08-02T00:00:00-07:002017-08-02T00:00:00-07:00http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/how-to-make-your-team-more-effective<a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/how-to-make-your-team-more-effective"><img src="https://d3oj8nq9p0q26f.cloudfront.net/blog/assets/images/posts/sprout-growth-079cc7d753982f2e68cdc455db4162effea471dbbaea684ce54ac3debd0314d0.jpg" /></a><p>As a leader, how you spend your time is critical. You have an incredible opportunity for impact because your decisions directly affect the output of your entire team. That makes investments in the team’s effectiveness particularly valuable and high-leverage.</p>
<p>The good news is that you can get really far by spreading the same best practices that make people effective engineers. Beyond that, you also have many tools available to help your team grow.</p>
<p>Here is a starting point.</p>
<h2 id="gather-input-as-to-whats-hard-or-frustrating">Gather input as to what’s hard or frustrating.</h2>
<p>As an experienced person on the team, you’ve probably built up a wealth of knowledge about how to be effective, but that knowledge may have also left you numb toward the pain points that may exist for others. You might have a powerful debugging or development workflow — but it relies on cobbling together an undocumented set of tools that must be used in a particular way. Or you might be able to quickly navigate around the codebase or internal tools — but others lack the same mental map of where things are. Or you might know which key stakeholders need to be consulted when for a project — but it’s non-obvious to everyone else on the team. Your team would be much more effective if you could bridge those gaps.</p>
<p>To learn what gaps exist, you first need to gather data. You can learn what’s working and what’s not informally through one-on-one meetings. Or, if you want a more systematic approach, you could also run an engineering survey like we recently did at Quip. We had all 26 engineers on our team fill out a ~30-minute, anonymous survey. Generally, things are going really well! But we also learned about certain tools and parts of the codebase that people dreaded and some things that were hard that people thought should be easy. These learnings have then fueled subsequent discussions and initiatives on how we can make things better.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/how-to-make-your-team-more-effective">Continue reading "How to Make Your Engineering Team More Effective &raquo;"</a></p>Edmond Lau<a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/how-to-make-your-team-more-effective"><img src="https://d3oj8nq9p0q26f.cloudfront.net/blog/assets/images/posts/sprout-growth-079cc7d753982f2e68cdc455db4162effea471dbbaea684ce54ac3debd0314d0.jpg" /></a><p>As a leader, how you spend your time is critical. You have an incredible opportunity for impact because your decisions directly affect the output of your entire team. That makes investments in the team’s effectiveness particularly valuable and high-leverage.</p>
<p>The good news is that you can get really far by spreading the same best practices that make people effective engineers. Beyond that, you also have many tools available to help your team grow.</p>
<p>Here is a starting point.</p>
<h2 id="gather-input-as-to-whats-hard-or-frustrating">Gather input as to what’s hard or frustrating.</h2>
<p>As an experienced person on the team, you’ve probably built up a wealth of knowledge about how to be effective, but that knowledge may have also left you numb toward the pain points that may exist for others. You might have a powerful debugging or development workflow — but it relies on cobbling together an undocumented set of tools that must be used in a particular way. Or you might be able to quickly navigate around the codebase or internal tools — but others lack the same mental map of where things are. Or you might know which key stakeholders need to be consulted when for a project — but it’s non-obvious to everyone else on the team. Your team would be much more effective if you could bridge those gaps.</p>
<p>To learn what gaps exist, you first need to gather data. You can learn what’s working and what’s not informally through one-on-one meetings. Or, if you want a more systematic approach, you could also run an engineering survey like we recently did at Quip. We had all 26 engineers on our team fill out a ~30-minute, anonymous survey. Generally, things are going really well! But we also learned about certain tools and parts of the codebase that people dreaded and some things that were hard that people thought should be easy. These learnings have then fueled subsequent discussions and initiatives on how we can make things better.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/how-to-make-your-team-more-effective">Continue reading "How to Make Your Engineering Team More Effective &raquo;"</a></p>Valuable Lessons Learned and Missed from My Time Working at Google2017-07-26T00:00:00-07:002017-07-26T00:00:00-07:00http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/what-working-at-google-will-teach-you<a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/what-working-at-google-will-teach-you"><img src="https://d3oj8nq9p0q26f.cloudfront.net/blog/assets/images/posts/leap-2d70fdd4dad3d2db6eb810ebb7d3678645149b15f63526ded90420fe65a08ae7.jpg" /></a><p>I joined Google’s Search Quality team right out of college. During my two years there — from 2006 to 2008 — I learned many things about how to become the best software engineer I could be.</p>
<p>I learned programming best practices from industry veterans who had distilled decades (probably even centuries) of collective experience into treasured documents of do’s and don’ts and the rationale behind them.</p>
<p>I learned how to design good APIs from Joshua Bloch (the lead architect behind the Java collections API) and wonderful insights from Guido van Rossum (the inventor of Python). There were so many educational tech talks available all the time.</p>
<p>I learned how critical it was to invest in simple building blocks. So much of Google was built on top of shared abstractions like Protocol Buffers and MapReduce, and so much tedious plumbing and hard problems became easy by assuming that these primitives were available.</p>
<p>I learned how having lots of data can trump smart algorithms. Peter Norvig calls this the “unreasonable effectiveness of data.”</p>
<p>I learned how simple, seemingly trivial choices like standardized conventions around how to indent your code matter at scale, when over ten thousand engineers are contributing to a 2+ billion-line code base and anything that reduces confusion and complexity provide huge payoffs.</p>
<p>I learned how useful code reviews were in scaling code quality and how important it was to get iterative feedback on the code that I was writing.</p>
<p>I learned how powerful it can spread engineering cultural values. Every week, a group of Googlers would plaster bathroom stalls with one-page “Testing on the Toilet” flyers that shared the week’s testing tip. What a quirky and fun way to spread knowledge.</p>
<p>I learned how important it was to invest in onboarding materials to ramp up new members of a team. I sponged up all the codelabs, best practices guides, and design docs that I could find, and I was thankful that these resources were so readily available for someone who wanted to learn all he could.</p>
<p>All of these contributed to my effectiveness today as an engineer.</p>
<p>But there were also many things I didn’t learn at Google — things I learned elsewhere and that I consider core to what it means to work effectively as an engineer.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/what-working-at-google-will-teach-you">Continue reading "Valuable Lessons Learned and Missed from My Time Working at Google &raquo;"</a></p>Edmond Lau<a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/what-working-at-google-will-teach-you"><img src="https://d3oj8nq9p0q26f.cloudfront.net/blog/assets/images/posts/leap-2d70fdd4dad3d2db6eb810ebb7d3678645149b15f63526ded90420fe65a08ae7.jpg" /></a><p>I joined Google’s Search Quality team right out of college. During my two years there — from 2006 to 2008 — I learned many things about how to become the best software engineer I could be.</p>
<p>I learned programming best practices from industry veterans who had distilled decades (probably even centuries) of collective experience into treasured documents of do’s and don’ts and the rationale behind them.</p>
<p>I learned how to design good APIs from Joshua Bloch (the lead architect behind the Java collections API) and wonderful insights from Guido van Rossum (the inventor of Python). There were so many educational tech talks available all the time.</p>
<p>I learned how critical it was to invest in simple building blocks. So much of Google was built on top of shared abstractions like Protocol Buffers and MapReduce, and so much tedious plumbing and hard problems became easy by assuming that these primitives were available.</p>
<p>I learned how having lots of data can trump smart algorithms. Peter Norvig calls this the “unreasonable effectiveness of data.”</p>
<p>I learned how simple, seemingly trivial choices like standardized conventions around how to indent your code matter at scale, when over ten thousand engineers are contributing to a 2+ billion-line code base and anything that reduces confusion and complexity provide huge payoffs.</p>
<p>I learned how useful code reviews were in scaling code quality and how important it was to get iterative feedback on the code that I was writing.</p>
<p>I learned how powerful it can spread engineering cultural values. Every week, a group of Googlers would plaster bathroom stalls with one-page “Testing on the Toilet” flyers that shared the week’s testing tip. What a quirky and fun way to spread knowledge.</p>
<p>I learned how important it was to invest in onboarding materials to ramp up new members of a team. I sponged up all the codelabs, best practices guides, and design docs that I could find, and I was thankful that these resources were so readily available for someone who wanted to learn all he could.</p>
<p>All of these contributed to my effectiveness today as an engineer.</p>
<p>But there were also many things I didn’t learn at Google — things I learned elsewhere and that I consider core to what it means to work effectively as an engineer.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/what-working-at-google-will-teach-you">Continue reading "Valuable Lessons Learned and Missed from My Time Working at Google &raquo;"</a></p>Facebook Tech Talk: How to Effectively Transform Your Engineering Effort into Impact2017-07-18T00:00:00-07:002017-07-18T00:00:00-07:00http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/effective-engineer-talk-at-facebook<a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/effective-engineer-talk-at-facebook"><img src="https://d3oj8nq9p0q26f.cloudfront.net/blog/assets/images/posts/facebook-talk-promo-a7eb6bb03afad6300c5e1bd290a062c1c9f0bfabe4b8f2b733f49f36c26e6242.jpg" /></a><p>Facebook recently hit 2 billion monthly active users. It’s a completely mind-blowing milestone, and I credit a large part of their ability to grow so quickly – they had hit the 1 billion-user mark less than five years ago – to the strong engineering culture they’ve built.</p>
<p>One part of their engineering culture that I really appreciate is their relentless focus on impact. Focusing on impact is so important there that it’s actually one of the company’s five core values. And that value ties in closely to the framework of leverage used by effective engineers and that I discuss extensively on my blog and in my book, <a href="/book"><em>The Effective Engineer</em></a>.</p>
<p>I was delighted to be invited recently by Facebook’s engineering team to give an internal tech talk at their Menlo Park headquarters, as part of their “Effective Engineering” talk series. They don’t usually share videos of these talks externally, so I’m even more delighted to be able to share a video of my talk with you.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/effective-engineer-talk-at-facebook">Continue reading "Facebook Tech Talk: How to Effectively Transform Your Engineering Effort into Impact &raquo;"</a></p>Edmond Lau<a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/effective-engineer-talk-at-facebook"><img src="https://d3oj8nq9p0q26f.cloudfront.net/blog/assets/images/posts/facebook-talk-promo-a7eb6bb03afad6300c5e1bd290a062c1c9f0bfabe4b8f2b733f49f36c26e6242.jpg" /></a><p>Facebook recently hit 2 billion monthly active users. It’s a completely mind-blowing milestone, and I credit a large part of their ability to grow so quickly – they had hit the 1 billion-user mark less than five years ago – to the strong engineering culture they’ve built.</p>
<p>One part of their engineering culture that I really appreciate is their relentless focus on impact. Focusing on impact is so important there that it’s actually one of the company’s five core values. And that value ties in closely to the framework of leverage used by effective engineers and that I discuss extensively on my blog and in my book, <a href="/book"><em>The Effective Engineer</em></a>.</p>
<p>I was delighted to be invited recently by Facebook’s engineering team to give an internal tech talk at their Menlo Park headquarters, as part of their “Effective Engineering” talk series. They don’t usually share videos of these talks externally, so I’m even more delighted to be able to share a video of my talk with you.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/effective-engineer-talk-at-facebook">Continue reading "Facebook Tech Talk: How to Effectively Transform Your Engineering Effort into Impact &raquo;"</a></p>How to Build an Engineering Culture that Focuses on Impact2017-07-11T00:00:00-07:002017-07-11T00:00:00-07:00http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/how-to-encourage-team-to-focus-on-impact<a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/how-to-encourage-team-to-focus-on-impact"><img src="https://d3oj8nq9p0q26f.cloudfront.net/blog/assets/images/posts/fistbump-79cea61aaf099a7e9d45338aeb02f2a1ea6406ed924e43cd9fca5de3357a00c6.jpg" /></a><p>Many years ago, during my time at Quora, the entire product and engineering team experimented with reviewing together how each project affected the business’s top-line growth metric. Which projects contributed the highest returns on investment toward growth? Which projects had we expected to drive growth, but had fallen short?</p>
<p>That monthly practice conveyed a crystal-clear message: what mattered most for any project was its impact on business growth. Individual teams spent more time discussing how to estimate and measure the impact of their work, and they prioritized their work based on the projected impact.</p>
<p>How engineers make tradeoffs depends strongly on the values behind the company’s culture. And that culture is heavily shaped by the conversations we choose to have and how engineers fit into those conversations.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/how-to-encourage-team-to-focus-on-impact">Continue reading "How to Build an Engineering Culture that Focuses on Impact &raquo;"</a></p>Edmond Lau<a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/how-to-encourage-team-to-focus-on-impact"><img src="https://d3oj8nq9p0q26f.cloudfront.net/blog/assets/images/posts/fistbump-79cea61aaf099a7e9d45338aeb02f2a1ea6406ed924e43cd9fca5de3357a00c6.jpg" /></a><p>Many years ago, during my time at Quora, the entire product and engineering team experimented with reviewing together how each project affected the business’s top-line growth metric. Which projects contributed the highest returns on investment toward growth? Which projects had we expected to drive growth, but had fallen short?</p>
<p>That monthly practice conveyed a crystal-clear message: what mattered most for any project was its impact on business growth. Individual teams spent more time discussing how to estimate and measure the impact of their work, and they prioritized their work based on the projected impact.</p>
<p>How engineers make tradeoffs depends strongly on the values behind the company’s culture. And that culture is heavily shaped by the conversations we choose to have and how engineers fit into those conversations.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/how-to-encourage-team-to-focus-on-impact">Continue reading "How to Build an Engineering Culture that Focuses on Impact &raquo;"</a></p>What Makes an Engineer Successful Here?2017-07-05T00:00:00-07:002017-07-05T00:00:00-07:00http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/what-makes-a-new-engineer-successful<a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/what-makes-a-new-engineer-successful"><img src="https://d3oj8nq9p0q26f.cloudfront.net/blog/assets/images/posts/map-2d4a3c8e9289b396a4fa37b31405f3d840af547966f197c38519e440fe1d6766.jpg" /></a><p>Whenever you’re starting a new role, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. You’re bombarded by an influx of new knowledge. You’re worried about ramping up as quickly as possible. You’re feeling anxious about proving yourself. It’s tempting to just put your head down and power through, believing that it’s the most direct path to success.</p>
<p>Take a deep breath.</p>
<p>One of the most valuable things you can do as you start your new role is to slow down, introduce yourself to the people around you, and ask them, <strong>“What makes an engineer successful here?”</strong></p>
<p>The one simple question turns out to be a powerful hack.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/what-makes-a-new-engineer-successful">Continue reading "What Makes an Engineer Successful Here? &raquo;"</a></p>Edmond Lau<a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/what-makes-a-new-engineer-successful"><img src="https://d3oj8nq9p0q26f.cloudfront.net/blog/assets/images/posts/map-2d4a3c8e9289b396a4fa37b31405f3d840af547966f197c38519e440fe1d6766.jpg" /></a><p>Whenever you’re starting a new role, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. You’re bombarded by an influx of new knowledge. You’re worried about ramping up as quickly as possible. You’re feeling anxious about proving yourself. It’s tempting to just put your head down and power through, believing that it’s the most direct path to success.</p>
<p>Take a deep breath.</p>
<p>One of the most valuable things you can do as you start your new role is to slow down, introduce yourself to the people around you, and ask them, <strong>“What makes an engineer successful here?”</strong></p>
<p>The one simple question turns out to be a powerful hack.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.effectiveengineer.com/blog/what-makes-a-new-engineer-successful">Continue reading "What Makes an Engineer Successful Here? &raquo;"</a></p>